[Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?

Michael A. Ivie mivie at montana.edu
Thu Feb 8 19:09:21 CST 2018 

OK, I misunderstood you, but you misunderstood me as well.  "... in the 
face of ever advancing understanding of the evolution of life on earth" 
is not meant to be just phylogenetics, but all aspects of biology that 
is bring more and more sense to the universe every day (expect in 
understanding voting patterns or political motivations).

Mike


On 2/8/2018 6:02 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> Mike said: "... in the face of ever advancing understanding of the evolution of life on earth"
>
> It is a moot point whether cladistics/phylogenetics does in fact advance understanding of the evolution of life on earth! It seems to me to be little more than a paint by numbers approach which can in theory be replicated by anyone else who uses the same character weightings, etc., but replicability alone does not imply that we are actually advancing understanding of the evolution of life on earth"!
>
> You also misunderstood my comments about retaining birds and mammals as named taxa. They ARE monophyletic, and I didn't say to necessarily retain them as taxa of equal rank to reptiles (so subtaxa of reptiles are indeed fine to me also), I just meant that we don't want to simply dump them into reptiles such that Reptilia simply contains various subtaxa from each in a way that doesn't group bird (or mammal) subtaxa together under a name.
>
> I'm surprised that anyone finds "interesting" the inconclusive and ephemeral results of phylogenetic studies!
>
> Stephen
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Fri, 9/2/18, Michael A. Ivie <mivie at montana.edu> wrote:
>
>   Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?
>   To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>   Received: Friday, 9 February, 2018, 12:56 PM
>   
>   Hi Stephan,
>   
>   It seems to me that you have this premise
>   backwards.  Rather than there
>   being a
>   cabal of rabid cladists obsessed with eliminating paraphyly,
>   I
>   think there is a cabal of rabid
>   revanchists obsessed with hanging on to
>   familiar paraphyletic taxa in the face of ever
>   advancing understanding
>   of the evolution of
>   life on earth.  In actual practice, most advocates
>   of a monophyly standard continue to use and
>   propose taxa that cannot be
>   shown to be
>   monophyletic, but if we have evidence, why not use it?
>   
>   You say "We wish to
>   retain birds and also mammals as useful monophyletic
>   taxa, for obvious reasons."  How, if you
>   mean as
>   nomenclaturally-recognized taxa at
>   a level equal to reptiles, is this
>   obvious,
>   or to be wished for?  We have the words "birds"
>   and "mammals"
>   for the folk
>   taxonomy, but why not recognize them for what they really
>   
>   are? Subtaxa of Reptiles works fine for
>   me.
>   
>   As for why look for
>   monophyletic lineages?  Because scientifically,
>   doing phylogenetics is INTERESTING.  I myself
>   do mostly alpha taxonomy,
>   because I
>   don't have the skill set to be a leading
>   phylogeneticist, but
>   I find their results
>   to be very thought provoking, interesting and even
>   exciting.  It is not that they get too much
>   funding, it is that
>   faunistics and taxonomy
>   get to little.
>   
>   Mike
>   
>   
>   
>   On
>   2/8/2018 3:07 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>   >
>   Hi all,
>   > I have been giving some thought
>   to the cladistic obsession of eliminating paraphyly in
>   taxonomic classification. For many taxa (above species), the
>   subtaxa consist of one or more clearly monophyletic groups,
>   plus a possibly paraphyletic residue (i.e. no apomorphies to
>   bind the residue together into a monophylum). So, if we must
>   eliminate paraphyly (or possible paraphyly), the only
>   options are to either: (1) subsume the monophyletic subtaxa
>   into the paraphyletic residue; or (2) break up the
>   paraphyletic residue into monophyletic subtaxa. Effectively
>   the two options may actually be equivalent. An example might
>   help to illustrate my point. Let's take a simplistic
>   view of reptiles as scaly tetrapods, birds as feathery
>   winged bipeds derived from reptiles, and mammals as hairy
>   tetrapods derived from reptiles. So, amniotes (reptiles,
>   birds and mammals) are a monophyletic group, as are birds
>   and also mammals, but not reptiles (reptiles being the
>   "paraphyletic residue"). We wish to retain birds
>   and also mammals as useful monophyletic taxa, for obvious
>   reasons. So, what to do? Luckily, within reptiles there are
>   some monophyletic subgroups of sufficient diversity to be
>   useful, but this might not have been the case if all
>   reptiles were just basically "skinks", with only
>   species or perhaps also generic differences between them.
>   Had this been so, amniotes would have to be taxonomically
>   split between numerous (maybe hundreds) virtually identical
>   taxa of "skinks", plus birds and also mammals as
>   just two taxa at the same level (not necessarily a ranked
>   level, but direct child taxa of amniotes). Would this be a
>   useful classification of amniotes? I suggest that it would
>   be far more useful to recognise a single paraphyletic taxon
>   of reptiles (all the "skinks" in the hypothetical
>   example), plus birds and also mammals (i.e. just 3 direct
>   child taxa of amniotes). I wonder for plants, fungi and also
>   invertebrates, if there might be many taxa analogous to the
>   above hypothetical example, with a paraphyletic residue
>   consisting of hundreds of "skinks", but also with
>   just one or two very distinct and diverse monophyletic
>   subtaxa? If so, would it be sensible to eliminate paraphyly
>   or best just to live with a known paraphyletic residue as a
>   unified subtaxon? Given the amount of limited resources
>   which are being allocated to projects to eliminate
>   paraphyly, to the detriment of alpha taxonomy, it would be
>   nice to think that there was a clearly good reason for the
>   elimination of paraphyly, but I'm not so sure that there
>   is! The usual argument seems to be that you cannot make
>   meaningful predictions from paraphyletic taxa, but how much
>   biology does rely on the making of predictions based on
>   taxon membership, and what proportion of those predictions
>   end up being true anyway? For example, you might predict
>   that a newly discovered braconid is a parasitoid, but a few
>   braconids are phytophagous anyway. So, I guess that the main
>   question that I am posing is whether we think that the
>   benefits of monophyly justify the spending of so much
>   limited resources on the elimination of paraphyly? Perhaps
>   the elimination of paraphyly is being driven instead by
>   economic factors, doing phylogenies being a more cost
>   efficient way for institutional scientists to spend their
>   time on than alpha taxonomy?
>   >
>   Stephen
>   >
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>   --
>   __________________________________________________
>   
>   Michael A. Ivie, Ph.D.,
>   F.R.E.S.
>   
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> .
>

-- 
__________________________________________________

Michael A. Ivie, Ph.D., F.R.E.S.

NOTE: two addresses with different Zip Codes depending on carriers

US Post Office Address:
Montana Entomology Collection
Marsh Labs, Room 50
PO Box 173145
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59717
USA

UPS, FedEx, DHL Address:
Montana Entomology Collection
Marsh Labs, Room 50
1911 West Lincoln Street
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59718
USA


(406) 994-4610 (voice)
(406) 994-6029 (FAX)
mivie at montana.edu

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